Disrespect for Authority
by Wombatman99
Summary: When Judger Jacklaw beat hell out of a nobleman in Gilead, he assumed it would be swept under the rug and ignored like normal. Instead, consequences came back to bite him in the ass. Now he's saddled with a hyperactive paranoid, the human embodiment of kleptomania, a psychotic with feelings for his weapon, and Otto, and it's his job to teach them how to be proper elite soldiers.
1. Good Soldier, Bad Educator

Hey! This is an original(-ish) story based off The All Guardsmen Party and some old D&D campaigns I played through. All the characters in this besides roughly 6 are all original characters that were either PC's or NPC's in the campaigns and later made apart of the setting's world building. There are also hella references in here so like, spot them all if you want to?

Either way, have fun with this dumpster fire I wrote.

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Fighting was in his blood. From a prizefighter, to a smuggler, to a murderer with warrants in more kingdoms and countries than he had fingers, he had seen more violence than most men saw their own junk.

He was Judger goddamn Jacklaw, the Winch Green Soldier, the man who had gone toe-to-toe with a Demon Prince of the Abyss and come out the winner.

Now here he was, sitting across from the leader of the Dead Bones Hunters and his best friend, handcuffed to a chair, and explaining why exactly he had been kicking that nobleman's teeth in.

"Well, Judger? Why did you decide that Lord Holger deserved to have his limbs shattered and his face stomped on?" Art asked him as he stared him down, chin coming to rest on his interlaced fingers.

Ikraam just looked at him like he was an idiot before slowly placing his head on the desk between them and letting out a long groan. Gee, thanks for the support bud.

"He tried to force me into being a slave. I work for exactly one person, and he's too busy with his siblings to be giving any orders, so you can understand if I was a bit rude in my refusal." Judger said with a cheeky grin, eyes crinkling into little upside-down u's as he leaned forward and tilted his head in a way that suggested Art was either an idiot, incompetent, or just too damn thick-skulled to understand why forced servitude was a bad thing.

"Right, never liked him anyhow. We're not letting you go just yet though." Art said, voice heavy with sarcasm as he stretched his arms back and his shoulders let out a pair of loud pops.

"Oh? I break some law I wasn't aware of?" Judger asked, expression surprisingly cheerful for someone who was, at best, one wrong move away from lifetime imprisonment in the deepest and darkest dungeon that Gilead had to offer.

"No, but we're using this as your punishment for the half-dead noble." Art said as Ikraam snickered from where he had his head on the desk.

Judger's expression went from cheerful to what could best be described as the bastard child of apoplectic rage and horrified shock as Art slid the paper to him across the desk.

At the top, in large bold writing, it read "Instructor Contract for Judger Kiran Jacklaw at the Gilead Inquisitorial Academy".

Judger spluttered, screamed, cursed, and begged for them to just execute him or something merciful like that, but all he got for his efforts was Art and Ikraam laughing even harder.

Rotten bastards.

Starting the next week, he would be teaching the brightest pupils in Gilead melee combat, Field Demonology, and combat improvisation.

The first two he knew well. One was his livelihood and the other was something he used on an hourly basis when dealing with Dante and/or his siblings. The third he assumed was just a fancy name for 'how to roll with it 101'.

After they explained the situation to him, they uncuffed him, gave him back his weapons (he may have cried when he got his swords back), and told him to look through the files when he got to his new accommodations.

The dormitory in the upper level of the academy was nice, almost posh, but the color scheme of olive drab and black dragged it back down to the level of a faculty dormitory in a fortress of a school.

He sat down at the desk and opened the sealed envelope containing his pupils for the year. It was a small class this year, even for the Inquisitorial Academy, with less than a dozen students per teacher.

The first file was one that reminded him of those pulp novels you could buy for a copper. Gyre DeWitt, a slum kid who had scrounged his way to the top of his class in the Guard Academy, been caught up in some scary orc shit, and as the lone survivor said scary orc shit was transferred into the Inquisition. The sketch, however, gave him other ideas. The kid was packing more explosives, than should have been necessary, with an expression that went past paranoid straight into primal fear of the world around him. He was listed as a demolition specialist and that he had jury-rigged a barrel full of some unholy mixture of booze, alchemist's fire, and broken glass with a stick of dynamite for the plug, and had used it to clear a frontier town of orcs after they slaughtered his squad and the inhabitants of the town.

The next started with the sketch on top. It was a depiction of a stumpy looking man with big ears, a big nose, and pockets full to bursting with things Judger could only imagine were _stolen_ going by his smug expression. Flipping through the file, he noted dozens of behavioral issues including, but not limited to, theft, sabotage, theft, distribution of contraband, theft, racketeering, theft, assault, theft, illegal gambling, and more theft. His name was Nathan "Nubby" Hollis and it was speculated that he was part goblin somewhere in his family tree.

Looking at the sketch again, Judger could see where they were coming from.

Officially, Nubby was an "acquisitions specialist". According to his former commanding officer, he was a chronic kleptomaniac, compulsive liar, and an outright coward in the field.

All Judger could think was that he'd have to check his pockets more frequently.

The file after that one was surprisingly bare. No behavior issues, no huge amazing feats, nothing extraordinary.

That was, until he got to the section outlining specialization and training.

The young man, whose name was Otto Kleef, had more specialized medical training than anyone else Judger had seen in his life. There had been people who could heal with magic, sure, but this wasn't magic. This was training, pure raw grit and spit training. This guy wasn't a mage of any sort, he was just a good damn doctor.

When he looked at the sketch, Judger had expected some battle-worn field surgeon or gritty looking back-alley doctor, but instead it was a young man, maybe early 20's at the most, who looked nearly as nervous as Ikraam when Art had first began to court him.

Judger almost felt bad about having such a nice looking kid under his care. His type weren't cut out for a battlefield.

The last file of the bunch, well, to put it lightly it _scared_ Judger. He was no stranger to getting up in someone's face and turning their torso into what could be called ground meat at best, but as he read over the file of Ezekiel Jedidiah Remus "Slasher" O'Callahan, the accounts of carnage that the man had been the perpetrator of brought Judger nearly to the point of vomiting.

Honestly, how do you turn someone's stomach into something like that? How!?

Reading further, he found out that the man had been a former _surveyor_ of all things, and that he had been brought into the Guard for being the sole survivor of a ghoul ambush.

The fact that he was the owner of a massive serrated sword taller than Judger that he apparently called "Millicent" was just batshit icing on the crazy cake.

The sketch scared him too. A short man who by all rights should have had the muscle tone of a stick of butter holding a (sheathed, thank the gods) sword that must have been a whopping 7 foot long across his shoulders, arms hanging onto it by his wrists and hands drooping like they were in a stockade.

The terrifying grin did not help the image, nor did the fact that he was evidently _covered in blood_.

Stuffing the files away, Judger turned to address the other package on the desk. It was supposed to be his instructor's uniform, and had apparently been made for "function over form".

Tearing open the brown paper wrappings and unfolding the garments, Judger once again returned to that state of apoplectic rage and horrified shock, but this time it was mostly rage.

The outfit was all black and gray, which was a _horrendous_ idea for somewhere like Gilead, where the daytime heat could easily reach sweltering in the shade. On top of that, it was _layered_. The top consisted of a black form-fitting shirt with two pockets on the chest (which Judger appreciated), a loose gray tunic which evidently was supposed to tuck into the trousers, and a long black overcoat that split near the bottom of his back into two long tails. The coat was bedecked in metal skulls and crosses, and even had an Inquisitorial Rosette of all things on the lapel. It had two deep pockets on the outside, which were a plus, along with what must have been half a dozen hidden pockets on the inside. The trousers were black, and had the standard hip pockets along with a pair of pockets on the sides of the legs. The boots were acceptable, maybe even an upgrade to his current pair so he might sneak off with those when his time there was over.

But, what topped the whole thing off (pun intended), was the _hat_. That _thing_ was a goddamn disgrace to all headwear. It was a peaked cap, with an inquisitorial symbol above the brim and gold ropes on the brim.

It was a garish and disgusting display of stupidity and anyone who _actually_ wore this on official Inquisitorial business must be either a goddamn idiot or just that good.

Sighing, Judger took the bundle of clothing (except for the boots, those were fine) and unceremoniously dumped the waste of cloth, metal, and leather into the wastebasket.

He then dropped face first into his bed, belt and swords hung on a bedpost, and a single thought running through his head.

" _I'm not cut out for this."_


	2. Shut Up and Soldier, Soldier

Hey! Chapter two of this. I've got 3 more chapters and an interlude written too, so those will also be apart of this mass uploading.

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A little known fact about Judger Jacklaw: he was a Gilead native. Well, not Gilead _proper_ , but he had been raised in an outlying village that paid tribute to the city-state, and like any other loyal young man of Gilead had been conscripted into its guard corps at the ripe old age of 15.

He had graduated the guard academy top of his class, done six months field service, and had been shipped back to the city for commissariate training. They were going to make an officer out of him.

Three months into said training he was kicked out for assaulting one of his instructors who, after finding out he had a younger sister, had said he would have to 'pay a visit to whatever inbred backwater he had been dragged out of to give her the time of her life'. This was seen as disproportionate retribution by the headmaster and several nobles, and had set him for execution within the week.

Needless to say that just like everything else someone with a rank above sergeant touched, it was a horribly botched endeavour that led to the deaths of several good men and much paperwork while Judger made his daring escape halfways across the ocean to the pirate city of High And Dry.

In the four and change years he had spent there, Judger had gone from a well-kept young man with touch and go anger management skills to what could at best be called a belligerent layabout with some modicum of business sense.

His motto had shifted from the optimistic "Grit, spit, and goodwill" to a more mercenary outlook of "Fuck you, pay me".

He found work in pit fights, then doing smuggling work on the Eastern Continent, and then general merc work alongside the people he could loosely define as a nympho with more magical firepower than Boccob and a hyperactive pyromaniac with a thing for anarchy. They were, in a word, psycho. But they were his psychos, and he'd kick the ass of anyone who tried to fuck with them.

So when at 7:15 AM AKA Fuck O'Clock in the morning his soon-to-be pupils walked into their classroom they found instead of some primly dressed pillock of an inquisitor ready to lecture them on the dangers of all sorts of things and how no one could be trusted (especially not themselves), they were greeted by a man in what looked like half-scrounged guardsman wear, a long leather coat with what seemed to be a crossbow bolt bandolier resized to hold _cigarettes_ , a pair of surprisingly spiffy boots, and a pair of rather high-quality short swords hanging from his belt lounging atop the large desk at the head of the room with what could only be called a bodice-ripper novel draped over his face, they were rather poleaxed.

They sort of stood around and gawked for a bit before Nubby got the oh so bright idea to try and nick one of the man's smokes off the top row of his coats built-in bandolier. That ended in Nubby eating hardwood with roughly 150 pounds of incensed chainsmoker driving a knee into his back.

"Oy, oy! I dint do nuffink!" The little trooper yelled as Judger lit up, knee still buried into the smaller mans back.

"Sure," Judger said around his cigarette, "and I'm Gruumsh."

Let it be noted, the amount of sarcasm that the previous sentence was laced with was enough to kill lesser men.

Gyre took it as stone-cold fact and began securing the perimeter and planning a strategic retreat.

Judger watched with no small amount of concern as the squirrelly man ran about placing explosives he had pulled from _somewhere_ around the room and yelling at the others to leave Nubby and run while they still could.

The other two, or at the very least the less bloodthirsty of the pair, took it with a grain of salt.

Otto, bless his soul, moved to the edge of the room and pulled his medkit from its place on his hip and set about preparing to patch up whoever got injured.

Slasher, on the other hand, took it as a challenge and spewed some nonsense about "how good killing a god would look on his record" and took a wild swing that would have taken Judger's head off had he not jumped back at the last second.

If there was any benefits to playing babysitter to the pyromaniac/nymphomaniac hyperactive toddlers that were Ikraam and Dante, it was heightened reflexes and a sense for when shit was about to go pear-shaped.

At the current moment in time, shit has left pear-shaped and morphed into the eldritch topography of a tesseract warping through the business end of a Balor.

Dancing through wild swings from the bloodthirsty little soldier, Judger snatched the trashy novel from the floor and bopped the aggressor on the forehead with the spine of it, putting him on his ass and stunning him for a minute.

With the angry little man subdued, Judger mustered up his limited commissar training and began barking orders and threatening executions.

He had them lined up at perfect parade rest in under half a minute. Maybe those instructors had been right about the whole "prodigy" thing.

He explained to them that he was the second most dangerous man on the continent (the first was Art, just for sheer swordsman skill), the fourth or fifth most dangerous between both continents plus High And Dry, and would be all too willing to bludgeon them to death with an erotic novel if they were stupid enough to be insubordinate again.

The quartet of soon-to-be inquisitors saluted, silently prayed to whatever god would listen, and took their places at the tables that ran parallel to the large oaken desk that Judger had been napping on before a sharp knock at the door to the classroom.

Judger answered it after the dirty book was stashed back in his coat, and the sight of the person on the other side made his jaw go slack and his machine-rolled cancer-stick fall out of his mouth and disappeared the moment it hit the floor before reappearing between Nubby's tapping fingers.

Seeing someone you know in a place you hate is always good, but when it's someone you hate in a place you hate more the effect is greatly diminished.

So when he saw Inari of all people missing an arm and an eye and balancing a fruit basket on his head, he was _deeply_ horrified that the universe had been listening earlier when he had said that the situation couldn't get any worse.

He didn't even go into the mixture of shock and rage that had become a mainstay of his emotional range as of late.

Inari explained that he was there to assist them in their physical training, and Judger paled.

Inari being present was bad enough. Inari teaching a hyperactive paranoid, a compulsive kleptomaniac, a batshit crazy ex-scribe, and _Otto_ (he couldn't think of anything to describe the mopey medic, at least not yet) was a disaster waiting happen.

Judger's sense for 'shit going pear-shaped' had officially reached new levels.

The tesseract in the business end of that Balor had officially transmuted itself into something only describable as _ploin-shaped_.

They were fucked. Judger knew they were fucked. The guardsmen knew they were fucked. Inari knew they were fucked and the smug asshat was grinning like a loon about it.

Judger snatched the fruit basket from atop the nutcase, speculated loudly and at length about Inari's parentage, sexual preferences, fighting capabilities, and alcohol tolerance before slamming the door and yelling through it that if he wanted to end himself he'd climb on top of his ego and jump to his IQ.

Inari responded to these insults by bursting through the wall adjacent to the door like a crippled kool-aid man, complete with a slightly accented scream of "OH YEAH!".

This sent Gyre into another frenzy of perimeter security, Nubby dove under a desk and pulled a crossbow from _somewhere_ , Otto plopped down on the floor with his medkit in his lap, and Slasher charged him with 'Millicent' drawn.

Halfway through the various spasms of instinct and/or depressed resignation, another familiar face came tromping through the hole in the wall asking, in that authoritative voice that he _must_ have gotten lessons from Chaucer on how to do, "What in the name of the Nine Hells are you bunch of incompetents _doing?_ ".

Art didn't look happy, to put it lightly. To tell the truth this was the closest to genuine anger that Judger had ever seen the man, and for someone who made a hobby of poking and prodding at people until they snapped and tried their damndest to murder him that said a lot.

What happened next could only be called an outright thrashing, with Judger and Inari both bowled over on the far wall making vaguely pathetic "mawp" sounds as they recovered from being thrown ass-over-teakettle by someone several inches shorter than either of them.

The four pupils were lined up on the wall opposite the one with the gaping hole in it getting chewed out by Art for being idiots.

A year ago, Art would have just given them a disappointed look and they'd have felt like they had kicked puppies. Now, after having leadership of an entire guild of elite (and eccentric) undead hunters, Art was perfectly comfortable with chewing someone out like they were a particularly gristly piece of steak.

In between his brain feeling like a boiled egg and his everything feeling like he had gone through an avalanche, Judger heard some particularly biting comments about whether or not Nubby was really just a deformed Bugbear.

When the stumpy man threatened to go above his head and report him for "Emotional 'buse of da highest caliber.", Art yanked him up by his collar and told him, very succinctly to, "Shut up and soldier, soldier."


	3. Gyre Gets It Right

After that disastrous first day, the next month and a half of training went on with relatively few hiccups. As the end of the quarter came up, Judger was given the task of coming up with a final exam for the quarter. Fighting one of the other classes was right out, because apparently the other classes were actual elites instead of numbnuts with no other place to go but the Inquisition. Testing them against himself wasn't an option either because he knew himself and he would wind up killing them, so he was out of options.

Then, the universe decided that he was due some goodwill and dropped the Tarl siblings into his lap.

At the outset, the two seemed like a pair of goofy foreign mercs in Gilead for a job, but for anyone involved in politics (or who had to keep tabs on lawmen because there was nothing legal about what they did for a living) they were the most dangerous lawmen on the Eastern Continent.

The pair had effectively grabbed the White Kingdom by the short hair of the ass after the "mysterious death" of its previous ruler, the White Dragon Brulado.

(The leader of the Black Kingdom only smirked and pulled his husband into his lap when asked about it. No one was brave enough to ask any further on the matter.)

Officially, the two were there as diplomats, at the inquisitorial school to witness just what into the training of an elite soldier. Unfortunately, they decided that Class 1-F looked interesting and got the exact opposite of an elite.

So there they stood on the sidelines of a training field watching Judger explain to his quartet of misfits that "one of the nice men in the armor volunteered to fight them one by one as their final exam for the quarter".

That was where things began to go wrong.

In order, here's how it went down.

Nubby started rummaging in his frighteningly deep pockets before pulling out what looked like a sap with a literally nine inch nail sticking out of it.

Otto went into his medkit and pulled out a handful of what looked like scalpels, but from the way the man deftly maneuvered them in between his fingers Judger figured they were something else.

Gyre, in the span of time that Judger took to _blink_ pulled out what seemed like a dozen adhesive explosive charges and their detonators.

And Slasher started making out with 'Millicent'.

As calmly as he could, Judger waved the two foreigners over and explained the situation. Brant, the older of the two siblings, gladly agreed to be their final exam and said he would even go easy on them and only use his shield.

Not being able to decide who would go first, the four incompetents drew straws. Nubby, for once in his life, didn't get the short end of the stick.

The order was decided. Otto, Slasher, Nubby, and Gyre, one after the other, up against a man whose tamest epithet was "Glacial Lion".

As they squared off against each other, Brant raised the massive wall of steel he called a shield. Otto, on the other hand, said a prayer to the god of healers and fanned his scalpels out in his hands before launching one the moment Judger gave the word to start.

Credit where it's due, Otto's aim was _impeccable_ and had it not been for Brant's years of combat reflexes raising the shield up in front of him to deflect the repurposed surgical tool, he would have lost an eye. This did not stop Otto from sending one scalpel after another at him from all angles, kiting around the larger man and barely dodging the savage swings of his shield.

Eventually, one of them found its mark and lodged itself in Brant's cheekbone, buried halfway up the blade in the mustachioed mans nasal passage. Brant responded to this by damn near _teleporting_ in front of Otto and force-feeding him some shield, which sent the poor medic flying into a wall.

Judger called the match there. No need to turn it into a bloodbath.

Slasher, after being pulled off of his sword, made for much more of a show. This time, blows were actually traded. Slasher would get one in on Brant's side, Brant would knock one of Slasher's teeth out with his shield, and the cycle would continue until, finally, it came to one final stand.

Slasher, who had positioned himself at the far end of the training court, charged forward with 'Millicent' pointed straight forward like a jousting lance. Brant, knowing a bull rush when he saw one, dropped to one knee and hunkered down to ring the troopers bell with an impassable wall of steel.

However, instead of Slasher driving his oversized blade through the shield or attempting to and breaking the whole thing and having to find a new girlfriend, he dug the tip down into the dirt just in front of the shield and vaulted over it like a pole vaulter before driving his heel into the back of Brant's head, cracking it on the edge of the shield and knocking him out cold.

Judger, feeling poleaxed and out of his depth, looked to the other of the two siblings.

Callum, feeling generous, said loudly and clearly that he would be happy to stand in for his unconscious brother for the rest of the exam.

Judger thanked the gods and made his way onto the field to drag Brant off the field.

Afterward, Judger was quoted as saying he "could hear the bastard snickering, like this was his idea of a joke".

As Callum readied his spear, Nubby palmed what looked like a simple rock. When Judger gave the signal, Nubby threw it and the thunderstone detonated right before Callum's eyes as it bounced off his helmet. The stumpy trooper charged forward as fast as his legs would carry him, dead set on getting the drop on the apparently blinded and deafened spearman.

Instead he got swept off his stubby little legs and had a spear pointed at his (rather pointy) adam's apple. Nubby, being Nubby, proceeded to do what he did best.

He cheated.

He cracked the heel of his boot against the ground, released the blade hidden in the toe of the footwear, and kicked for the ankle of his attacker.

Rule number 1 of being short: the ankles are always a valid target.

Callum moved his leg out of the way, the point of his spear lifting at the same time, and Nubby hopped back up like some unholy fusion of a rabbit, a goblin, and some sort of rat-person. Back on his feet, Nubby swung with his sap and found resistance against it. Mostly because he had just buried the nail in the haft of Callum's spear. Not being one to waste a potential advantage, Nubby yanked with all his might in a bid to rip the weapon from his foes hands.

Instead, because the universe doesn't think Nubby deserves nice things, the spear broke.

Now, when a sword breaks, that's that, sword broken, only reforging can fix it. A spear, on the other hand when broken turns into a slightly shorter spear and a baton.

And that's how Nubby wound up with a puncture wound in his leg and a dozen bruises about his head and shoulders.

Now, with his spear broken there wasn't a whole lot for Callum to do, so he simply threw his broken weapon to the side and pulled himself into a tight boxing stance, his fists raised in an effort to protect his face. Gyre, on the other hand, looked almost comical.

He had a pile of adhesive explosive under one arm, and his unoccupied hand held a globule of the sticky gooey stuff.

As the signal to start came, Callum moved in quickly, only to be met by a snowball of explosive hurtling toward his face. He dodged a head on collision, but seeing the twitchy soldier draw a detonator from his hip satchel and flip the switch on it, sending Callum hurtling forward in a rush of light and pain was only barely better than taking it to the face.

The wiry trooper wasn't done yet though, already hurling three more balls of sticky bomb at the armored envoy.

Callum's luck (and skill) was only good enough to dodge two of them, the other sticking itself to his chestplate. As Gyre slowly but surely got his explosives stuck to his opponent, Judger noted more and more their strategic placement.

One at the chest to knock him back, one on each of the arms to blow the limb away entirely should need be, one at his hip to potentially immobilize for execution, and other smaller bits smattered across the once pristine armor.

Then, when Callum finally landed a solid uppercut on Gyre, there was a click.

And Gyre's deadman's switch kicked in, sending Callum spinning with explosive momentum as the low-grade explosive detonated.

Now, it didn't maim him, only bruised and singed him, but it still hurt like a bitch.

Judger knew now. They were holding out on him.


	4. Interlude 1: Nubby

Many would remark that, at his core, Nathan Hollis was a coward. He fought dirty, he ran from anything bigger than him (which was a good majority of the rest of the world), and if he came within 5 feet of you your pockets were guaranteed to be a little lighter when he left the vicinity.

In his off time however, Nubby ran a rather lucrative (if illegal) business out of a rather underutilized storage shed which he kept stocked full of contraband items. He wasn't entirely without scruples though. He never dealt with children, he never sold hard drugs, and he never dealt in people.

Today, however, he found himself saddled with a bit of a burden. Earlier, in class, Judger had given each of them a training mission to help make them "look good to the community".

Gyre was assigned to helping fix up a home for the elderly, Otto was helping take care of animals at a livery stable, Slasher (no one could be bothered to remember the man's real name, not even the man himself) was helping out with the harvest of some grain for a village just outside the cities walls, and Nubby…

Nubby was told to go to the local orphanage and entertain the kids for a while, which somehow explained how he currently had a dozen pubescents watching in awe as he haggled over what was supposed to be a lost Named Blade.

Yeah, Nubby knew there was no way in any of the nine hells that this hunk of shit was a Named Blade, but the schmuck buying it didn't know that. After another half-hour of dickering, Nubby was up 30 large and down one piece of 'battlefield salvage'.

Really, it was like idiots just fell into his lap.

The punks kids followed him around as he wandered through the market picking pockets and nicking knick-knacks, and he thought they might not even be that much of a headache.

That was, until one of them saw him snag an apple off a nearby cart and yelled for a city watchman.

That was an awkward 5 minutes of explaining that he had just forgotten to pay and was entirely willing to pay extra for the trouble of making a scene, all to a massive man decked in chain mail and packing a wicked looking truncheon.

Nubby noted which kid had ratted on him.

He carried on like that the rest of the day, doing his shopping (legitimately this time. One run in with city watch was enough.), and dropping the kids back off at the orphanage with a little something to remember of it.

It was halfway back to his 'lodging' (a hammock in the back of his shack) that he realized he still had a tail. Now, Nubby was what you would call a "career criminal", so he was pretty good at finding someone following him.

This kid made Nubby look like an amateur.

Everywhere Nubby looked, he just couldn't find the little sneak. He decided the little creep had a good reason to be following him, so he just kept his course back to the shed.

When he shut the door to the shed, he finally found the kid. He had just shut the door and turned around to find him sitting on the ground in front of his stash, knees pulled up and a look like pure misery on his face.

He was scrawny, scrawnier than the other orphans, and his clothes were more patches than original material, but the big tickets on him were the leather cap with earflaps on the sides and the big dark-colored goggles over his eyes. His skin was gray-ish, which was normal for Gilead, but his was like it had been dusted in coal as opposed to the undead-like tone Gilead's peoples were known for.

"Well pal, why didja follow me? Ol' Nubby dunt sell to anyone under the age o' twenny so it must be advice ya come for." Nubby said as he squatted down in front of the kid and pulled a lopsided grin.

"Wanna stay here." The kid said, voice barely above a whisper. He was young, so young, and for him to sound so scared hurt Nubby right to the core of the greedy little thing he called a heart.

"Eh? Why's that squirt? And give ol' Nubbs your name while yer at it, finding' words that mean kid is gettin' tiring." Nubby said as he fell back into a sitting position like the boys.

"Name's Trip. The other kids bully me all the time, and miss caretaker calls me a monster. I don't wanna be a monster, ain't mean enough to be a monster." The kid began to bawl and buried his face into his knees, leaving Nubby stunned for a moment before he closed the distance and wrapped Trip in a hug.

"Shush now Trip, shush now, you're no monster. You want to know something? My teacher's a real monster, but he's a nice guy too. Sometimes." Nubby said as he rubbed the young boy's back consolingly.

The boy hiccuped again, and raised his head, cap tumbling off to reveal snow-white hair that looked to have been cut with a dull knife, badly at that, and his goggles sliding off to reveal eyes white from the edge to the center.

Nubby finally got it. Finally. The daft little bastard.

"You're half Drow." He breathed, eyes going wide and jaw hanging in surprise.

At this, Trip got angry.

"That's what you notice first!? Not that I'm a freak!? Not that I'm a girl who acts like a boy!? Not that I can turn _**invisible**_!?" He yelled, shoving Nubby off of him as he stood up.

"Ow...Laughing Rogue kid, you sure can knock a fella around!" Nubby said as he pulled himself up from the dirt floor of the shed.

"And what does tha' other stuff matter? Ya aren't tryin' to murder nobody, and you ain't about to go on no thievin' sprees all invisible, so what's the harm of it?" Nubby said as he dusted himself off. It really was an exercise in futility because this was Nubby, who had a coat that could best be summarised as 'trash with more trash inside it'.

"You...shut up, stupid bastard…" Trip said as fresh tears began to fall and he wrapped his arms around the (only marginally) taller man.

"Thank you." He said as he cried into Nubby's shirt, his actions saying sadness but the wave of emotion radiating from him dancing with happiness. Acceptance. Love.

"S'nothing kid. Big brother Nubby, to the rescue." Nubby said as he pulled his newly adopted little brother into a tight hug.

"Now, let's go have a talk with someone about you moving in."

The argument Nubby got into with the caretaker would later be described as the most violent, vulgar, angry, and intense thing to ever occur short of a massacre.

Nubby decided an upgrade was in order and sprung for a small house near the Inquisitorial Academy.

Trip got his first real home.

Slasher ribbed Nubby endlessly for it, but Nubby couldn't care less.

He had his little brother, what else did he need?


	5. The Nonsense Ballista Continues To Fire

p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"In Judger's expert opinion, this week wasn't going so well. Class on Monday had begun with him walking in to hear Otto shout the words "Gyre don't do that!" and the classroom exploding./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"And that was even before they gave their debriefings for their training missions./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Which, incidentally, all amounted to some sort of incident that would have gotten anybody else killed and their body rolled into the ocean./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Slasher: repelled what he thought was a gnoll incursion but were actually traders/span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Otto: saw someone get kicked in the jewels by a draft horse and nearly castrated him by accident when he went to treat the poor bastard/span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Gyre: accidentally secured the perimeter of the home for the elderly/span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Nubby: adopted a kid/span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"And, to make matters worse, the explosion had destroyed his novel. Fare thee well, oh "Hunt for the Two-Backed Beast", you shall be missed./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"When Gyre apologized for destroying their classroom, Judger's immediate reaction was to reach for where he normally kept the book to bludgeon his student with it, but remembered his predicament./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Instead, he settled for telling Gyre not to do it again if he could help it, sent him back to his seat on the dusty training ground, and began their lesson on how to defeat a Concubi when you've got blue balls./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"After lessons had concluded, the four met to discuss their tutors..disheartened, state of being./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Slasher, of all people, was the first to figure out that Judger's bout of depression was due to the lack of erotica to beat them with, and at first it seemed stupid./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"This was remarked on by Nubby who said "That's stupid, yer stupid, and anyone who believes that is double-stupid.". Nubby wasn't a very eloquent kind of guy./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Then Otto agreed with Slasher, and then Gyre agreed with Slasher, and then Nubby had to concede his point and said he knew a good place to get books like what Judger had used to entertain himself and discipline them with./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"This came at no surprise to any of them./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"At first they suggested Gyre should go on his own to buy the replacement, then Nubby said he would go along to since Gyre's sense of direction was limited solely to 'the perimeter', then Slasher said he would tag along to find something for himself, and finally Otto decided he would go along to make sure nobody did anything stupid./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Little did he know how futile his efforts would be./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"And so the four intrepid troopers made their way down to the lower quarter of Gilead's market, went through several backdoors, through one cellar door and out another, crawled through a sewer maintenance tunnel, and at one point Nubby spent several minutes arguing with a kenku in undercommon which amounted to "no they're cool" before they finally arrived at their destination near the outskirts of the market in a back alley of a back alley with what seemed to be a lizardfolk selling themselves on the corner not 10 feet away./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Otto couldn't even begin to count the health code violations, and that was just the ones within 5 feet of him./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"The door to the shop in front of them was, frankly, nonexistent. It was a curtain of beads, above which hung a lopsided sign that read "Slap Tickle Adult Novelties"./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Otto, the poor bastard, nearly fainted upon reading it. The only reason he didn't is because he would have landed in a fairly suspicious mud puddle if he had./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Slasher giggled in that creepy way of his, Nubby steeled his nerves, and Gyre eyed a flask suspiciously before chugging the contents./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"When questioned by Nubby, the twitchy soldier answered with "I figured it was either nitroglycerin or cider, and judging by the burn I don't think it was either.", which was entirely unhelpful./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Otto was still standing outside the door shaking like a dog shitting peach seeds when the lizardfolk started eyeing him and he bolted inside for his own safety./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"He was slowly backing into the store, eyes screwed shut like the good churchgoing boy he was, when he backed into something./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Or, more accurately, someone./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"They were wide, with strong muscles, and from what he could feel pressing against the back (and sides) of his head a rather impressive set of assets./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Turning around, at that moment, was not the wisest decision he could have made. In fact, it likely ranked as one of the worst possible choices, right up there with saying some cheesy pickup line and/or simply copping a feel./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"He realized the error of his ways when he got a face full of surprisingly muscled breast and was hefted off the ground by his shoulders until he came face to face with what he would later call "an angel of muscle, leather, tattoos, and piercings"./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Nubby introduced the (literal) goliath of a woman as Gazzeek, the owner and sole employee of the store. She told them that so long as they didn't wreck her store that she would stay out of their business, and quickly the other three idiots got to work finding a replacement for Judger's fallen smut./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Otto, awkward little shit he was, hung around the counter while Gazzeek pulled out a pair of comically tiny spectacles and began to straighten out the ledger of transactions she had pulled out from under it./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Discreetly (or as discreetly as a lanky beanpole of a medic with a crush can be), Otto peeked over at her. She was tall, even compared to his lanky 6 and a half feet, and she had muscle like he had only seen on orcs, but the big selling points were the little things. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"The way she dressed conservatively, with a pair of sturdy canvas breeches and heavy boots, a well made tunic that clung to her muscles in just the right ways, it all made the field surgeon go somewhat blushy. Then there was her dark hair, braided and pulled back but with one errant strand that always had to be tucked back behind her ear. The way her silver metal piercings glinted in the sun's last rays, from the twinkling studs in her ears, to the delicate hoops in her lower lip, even the barest peek of the rounded stud placed in her tongue as she stuck it out in concentration. /span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Otto was beginning to feel weak in the knees at that particular sighting./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Then Nubby whispered in his ear that she was single, paid for the book they'd bought to replace Judger's destroyed one, and told him that he and the others would be waiting for him outside./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;""M-miss Gazzeek, um, I w-was wondering, uh, would you like to um, uh, wouldyoupleasegoonadatewithmeplease?" Otto stuttered out, his face as red as flame./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"It would be an understatement to say that the goliath woman was caught off guard./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Graciously (read: a stuttering mess no worse than her would-be Romeo), she accepted and they agreed, both stuttering like lovestruck schoolchildren, to meet the coming Saturday night for dinner at one of the nicer bars in Gilead./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"Otto nearly fainted when she pulled him close and pecked him on the cheek, though he could have swore she looked near passing out as well./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"When he finally stepped out of the shop, it was to his compatriots crouching in the street playing a game of Watch Me and wondering if they would have to go find another field medic after Gazzeek broke their current one./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"These remarks were met with Otto speculating loudly and at length on their sexual preferences, penis sizes, lack of skill as lovers, combat ability, and how bad they all were at cheating at cards./span/p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;" /p  
p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-top: 0pt; margin-bottom: 0pt;"span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: #000000; background-color: transparent; font-weight: 400; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"The three all agreed later that Otto getting a girlfriend was the worst thing that could happen to them yet./span/p 


	6. The Seafaring Incident Part 1

Now many people would describe Judger Jacklaw as callous, rude, vulgar, insane, and an outright bastard, but the one thing that many people didn't know (only Ikraam and Dante had seen it themselves) was that Judger Kiran Jacklaw, the Winch Green Soldier worth just under 100,000 gold, got attached to people easily.

So when he walked into his class the day after finding a new novel mysteriously in front of his door to find his students being physically assaulted by one of the other classes with their instructor laughing like a loon as it happened, something inside of him _snapped_.

Gingerly setting down his cup of coffee, Judger slid his coat off, hung it on the rack, and jumped into the melee bellowing something that sounded suspiciously like "GET YOUR DICKBEATERS OFF MY KIDS!".

After bludgeoning the enemy class to the point of unconsciousness and setting Otto to patching up his friends, Judger demanded an explanation from the other instructor.

"Okay, you can stop laughing now you overdressed pillock. What's so funny about attempted murder, eh?" Judger said as he pulled the shorter instructor up to eye level by his lapels.

When the short dumpy man finally stopped laughing, he wiped a tear from his eye, looked at Judger, and began laughing again.

"Right, real funny asshole. How about I string you up by your innards and leave you for the buzzards eh? _How's that for funny you little shitstain?_ " Judger said as he rammed the man up against the wall, his grip on the man's lapels turning his knuckles white.

Then the little bastard stopped laughing, spit in his face, and tried to kick him with those stubby little skin tags he had the gall to call legs.

This blatant show of disrespect ended in Judger hanging the man from one of the many grotesques lining the eaves of the building by his coat with a sign stapled to his chest that read "I'm a fucking idiot".

Harassment for Class 1-F, however, did not end there.

Judger liked to think himself a forgiving man. He tried to turn the other cheek, but doing so only to get slapped can only happen to a man so often before he responds in kind.

Judger assumed that the mission his team had been assigned was said slap in the face.

The mission: travel to High and Dry to acquire a ship for use as an inquisitorial vessel.

The catch: Nubby was in charge of it all.

Judger could only assume this was fates version of a swift kick in the pants. On the upside though, they had been given a few million gold to negotiate with and spend on their mission needs.

Judger imagined they wouldn't miss a couple thousand.

Their trip to High And Dry was surprisingly smooth and uneventful. No pirates, no storms, not even a sea monster. It was almost boring with anything besides the usual weirdness occurring. Gyre securing the perimeter, Otto writing sappy letters to his new girlfriend, Nubby trading contraband for smokes and booze, and Slasher spending a frankly rather creepy amount of time polishing his sword.

Their arrival, on the other hand, was certainly weirder than normal. Judger was used to being met at docks with angry mobs or angrier (if cute) bartenders, not whatever this was.

'This' just so happened to be a red carpet flanked by a retinue of goblins in page outfits heralding their arrivals with off-key trumpet notes with what had to be the strangest thing any of them had ever seen.

It was a half-ogre, which wasn't odd for High And Dry, but the fact he was decked out in a yellow and black pinstripe suit, a yellow and white fur cape, and a pair of thick-lensed glasses that hung around his neck by a strap.

Apparently, this was their contact. When he tried to speak, a mess of slang, heavily accented words, and at one point he began gesturing wildly with his hands.

Nubby responded in kind and Judger realised why the weaselly trooper was chosen to lead the job. There was nobody else as inarticulate, tactless, guileless, and trashy as Nubby.

No one would think he was an Inquisition agent.

After the greetings had ended, the half-ogre (whose name, from what Judger could catch, was Dosh Loadsamoney) lead them to a surprisingly nice bar. Nubby and Dosh disappeared into a room in the back, free drinks were brought out for the rest of them, and then all hell broke loose.

Now, alcohol on High And Dry is serious business. Unless you're specific in what you want, you'll get the equivalent of telling the bartender to surprise you. Nubby, having never been to High And Dry, had told the bartender to "whip up sumfin strong fer tha boys". The bartenders definition of "sumfin strong" had been something called a Boiling Ocean.

The drink was four parts whiskey, four parts lemon juice, and the pulp of a large red chili pepper all blended in with a beer.

And Judger's group had just been served a dozen of them.

Judger was not an adventurous drinker. It was always "gimme a beer" or "whiskey, neat", never "sumfin strong".

So when Judger knocked back what he assumed to be a specialty beer in one go and proceeded to go cockeyed, red-faced, and slightly stupid, in unison with the remainder of his class, things were all but guaranteed to go tits-up.

Nubby's reaction when he came out of the back room to inform them that they were now the proud owners of _The Action Limit_ and saw his commander/teacher standing on their table positively soused and singing an old guardsman's drinking song was positively hilarious. His already bulgy eyes bugged out more, his jaw dropped, and he let out a suspiciously mournful whine like that of a sad kitten.

He just sort of stood there and gaped for a second, watching as his normally lax commander led the bar in another round of "Drunken Sailor" with his face flushed and his normally commanding voice reduced to the slurs of a drunkard.

Nubby whimpered again, went back to their ship, and prayed to Olidammara that they wouldn't be hungover the next day. Judger sober was bad enough, but nursing a migraine and half-blind?

Nubby would sooner jump in a month-old latrine after dinner.

Let it never be said that fate was fond of Nathan Hollis.

Nubby had come into the ships mess hall to find his comrades all nursing some form of hangover aside from Otto, who seemed bright and chipper much to the ire of the others.

Tentatively, and more tactful than he ever had been before and ever would be again, Nubby explained to them that he had acquired the vessel in question for 500,000 gold pieces and that they would be sailing back on that and the passenger ship they had taken to High And Dry would be staying docked until it was resupplied. A crew of Gilead sailors had been stationed on High And Dry preemptively for this assignment.

Now, one thing about Gilead is that its people are intensely superstitious. Gilead sailors make the normal superstitions of a citizen seem tame and sane.

These men feared everything, from redheads to even bananas, though it was the general opinion of the Gilead Guardsman's Corps that compared the Noble Houses or the various Blade Cults of the city, the Gilead Royal Navy was the closest thing to sane you were going to get.

So, Nubby led his compatriots to where the ship was docked, grin so wide it forced his eyes shut. He was proud of this one, a beauty like this for only 500,000! What a steal!

"Hey, Nubbs? Where's the boat? Is it hidden behind that piece of shit right there?" Came Slasher's inquiring voice, normal bloodlust completely absent for once.

Then Nubby opened his eyes, took in _The Action Limit_ for what it really was, and began to cry.


End file.
